consciousness

Question 1

Consciousness:

Answer 1

our moment-to-moment awareness of ourselves and our environment.

– Subjective & private: cannot know for sure what other people are thinking.

– Dynamic (ever changing): sometimes fully alert and sometimes dozy etc. focusing on some things but not others so there are different levels of consciousness depending on your focus. Flow between.

– Self-reflective & central to our sense of self:

– Intimately connected with…
• Selective Attention: the process that focuses awareness on some stimuli to the exclusion of others

Question 2

Measuring States of Consciousness

self report measures

Answer 2

Ask people to describe their inner experiences.
Cannot know if they’re being genuine and cannot know that they understand accurately what is going on in their head. How can you verify objectively that they’re being accurate?

Question 3

Measuring States of Consciousness

behavioural measures

Answer 3

Record performance on special tasks.
E.g. self-awareness test: paint spot on their nose and show them their reflection in a mirror, they either recognise that the reflection is themselves and try to touch the spot, or they think that the reflection is a different animal.
This assesses whether humans or animals have self-awareness (if they touch the spot they have self-awareness).
Children by 18 months are able to reliably tell that it is them in the mirror and thus suggests that they have self-awareness.
Rely on inference of behaviour alone.

Question 4

Measuring States of Consciousness

Physiological measures

Answer 4

Establish correspondence between bodily processes and mental states.
Problem is that consciousness is a very complex process and involves many processes. How do you establish correspondence between the different systems?

Question 5

The Freudian Viewpoint:

Answer 5

3 levels of consciousness:
Conscious mind: thoughts & perceptions of which we are currently aware.

Preconscious mental events: outside current awareness but easily recalled under certain conditions.

Unconscious events: cannot be brought into conscious awareness under ordinary circumstances. (Things designed not to be expressed: sexual fantasies, childhood traumas etc.)

Question 6

The Cognitive Viewpoint:

Controlled (Conscious) Processing

Answer 6

conscious use of attention & effort.

• Slower, but more flexible.

Question 7

The cognitive viewpoint

Divided Attention:

Answer 7

activities that can be performed without conscious awareness or effort.
• Fast, routine actions.
• Sometimes overthinking can inhibit performance.

Question 8

The cognitive viewpoint

Blind sight:

Answer 8

reported blindness in part of the visual field; individuals still respond to stimuli

Damage to part of the brain that stop you being able to see. So not the eyes themselves that don’t work but a part of the brain. So in some parts of their visual field they cannot see.
They cannot see the object but they can point to where it is. By giving the person a forced choice they can get accuracy scores of 80-100% (rather than 50:50). So they are responding to the stimuli still.
They cannot visually experience the object but they still receive some information about it.
Two types of blind sight: 1 – Don’t feel like they are seeing or experiencing anything. 2 – They experience something but don’t see.

Question 9

The cognitive viewpoint

Priming

Answer 9

exposure to a stimulus influences how you subsequently respond to that same or another stimulus (summarise in your own words the Krosnick et al. 1992 study)

Exposure to pleasant stimulus means (unconscious) positive response. It is possible to present stimuli to people unconsciously to produce a response and change in behavior without us even noticing.

Question 10

Why do we have consciousness?

Answer 10

Provides summary of various internal & external stimuli perceived in a given moment

Summary is then available to brain regions involved in planning & decision making

Allows us to override potentially dangerous behaviors governed by impulses or automatic processing

Allows us to deal with novel tasks & situations

Question 11

sleep

Answer 11

We cycle through stages approximately every 90 minutes

Question 12

Beta Waves

Answer 12

pattern of waves that are present when you are awake and alert.
• High frequency; low amplitude

Question 13

Alpha Waves:

Answer 13

pattern of waves that are present when you are feeling relaxed and drowsy.

Question 14

stages of sleep

stage 1

Answer 14

light sleep; easily awakened
• Brain wave pattern becomes more irregular
• Presence of slower theta waves increase
light sleep; easily awakened
• Brain wave pattern becomes more irregular
• Presence of slower theta waves increase

Question 15

stages of sleep

stage 2

Answer 15

deeper sleep characterized by sleep spindles (periodic bursts of rapid brain wave activity)

Question 16

stages of sleep

stage 3

Answer 16

regular appearance of slow & large delta waves

Question 17

stages of sleep

stage 4

Answer 17

deepest level of sleep during which delta waves dominate the EEG pattern – brain is less active and more likely to experience dreams
– Stages 3 & 4 referred to as slow-wave sleep.

Question 18

REM sleep:

Answer 18

characterized by rapid eye movements, high arousal (comparable to daytime levels), & frequent dreaming
Rapid eye movements – scanning the environment as if looking for something (i.e. predators)

Question 19

• REM Sleep Paralysis:

Answer 19

an inability to move muscles during REM sleep – if we did there would be the danger that we would perform what is happening in our dreams.

If you’re tossing and turning in your sleep then it’s not REM sleep

Question 20

• Paradoxical Sleep

Answer 20

body is highly aroused, but very little movement – people may look fast asleep but eye activity can be ambiguous.

Question 21

During the course of the night

Answer 21

• REM periods increase in length

* Stages 3 & 4 decrease in length (sleep becomes shallower)

Question 22

when do dreams occur?

Answer 22

Dreams can occur during any sleep stage

Question 23

Hypnagogic State:

Answer 23

the transitional state from wakefulness through early stage-2 sleep.

Question 24

what do we dream about?

Answer 24

Most dreams not as strange as they are stereotyped to be – often people and places in your dream are those that you know

Commonly contain negative content (aggressive acts, misfortune, negative emotions, etc.)

Women dream of men & women equally; 2/3 of men’s dream characters are male

Cultural background, life experiences, & current concerns can shape dream content

Question 25

why do we dream?

wish fulfillment

Answer 25

the gratification of our unconscious desires and needs

Includes sexual & aggressive urges that are too unacceptable to be consciously acknowledged

Question 26

why do we dream?

Manifest Content

Answer 26

the surface story that the dreamer reports

Question 27

why do we dream?

Latent Content:

Answer 27

the dream’s disguised psychological meaning

Question 28

why do we dream?

Dream Work:

Answer 28

the process by which a dream’s latent content is transformed into the manifest content

Question 29

Activation-Synthesis Theory

Answer 29

• Dreams do not serve any particular function - they are merely a by-product of REM neural activity

o Brain is bombarded with random neural activity during REM sleep (activation)
o The cerebral cortex creates a plausible story from these random firings (synthesis)
o Explains why many dreams seem bizarre

Question 30

Cognitive Theories

Problem-Solving Dream Models:

Answer 30

dreams aren’t constrained by reality so can help us find creative solutions to our problems & ongoing concerns

Question 31

cognitive theories

Cognitive-Process Dream Theories

Answer 31

focus on the process of how we dream & propose that dreaming & waking thought are produced by the same mental systems in the brain
• Similarity between dreaming & waking mental processes

Question 32

Dreaming While Awake

Daydreams

Answer 32

significant part of waking consciousness; provides stimulation during periods of boredom

Question 33

dreaming whilst awake

• Fantasy-Prone Personality:

Answer 33

individuals who often live in a vivid, rich fantasy world that they control
◦ Most are female

• Greater visual imagery than other waking mental activities
• Less vivid, emotional, & bizarre than nighttime dreams

Question 34

hypnosis

Answer 34

a state of heightened suggestibility in which some people are able to experience imagined situations as if they were real

Question 35

hypnotic induction

Answer 35

the process by which one person leads another person into hypnosis

Question 36

Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales

Answer 36

contain a standard series of pass-fail suggestions that are read to a subject after a hypnotic induction
- People differ in how susceptible they are to hypnotic suggestions

Question 37

Orne (1959)

Answer 37

One group of students told prior to being hypnotised that a common feature of a trance is stiffening of the muscles in the dominant hand.

This information was false.

When the students were hypnotised, of those who had been told about the hand stiffening 55% spontaneously displayed this.
No-one in a control group (who hadn’t been told this) showed the behaviour.